Multiple files, records, and documents are created for individual patients every day. This widely varying collection of documents and data comes from many different care organizations, each of which may use different systems for storing, managing, and sending information. To ensure quality care for patients who may require services from more than one organization, each organization may need access to the documents and data produced and stored by another organization.
Organizations have frequently relied on decades-old unsecure fax technology or ordinary paper mail to exchange these documents and data. With the advent of the Internet, many care organizations exchange clinical documents online, using equally unsecure technologies, such as email. This practice threatens the confidentiality of patient information and serves as an inefficient means for exchanging clinical documents and data.
As patient and legislative awareness of the importance of patient privacy has increased, however, so has the need for a way to exchange clinical documents securely, conveniently, and in an interoperable manner. Governments and standard-setting-organizations have begun to adopt protocols for exchanging clinical documents, but there is no universal standard. A single, global standard for document-exchange may never emerge given the varying requirements for patient privacy among jurisdictions, organizations, and countries. As a result, the exchange of clinical documents remains inconvenient, fragmented, and unsecure.